The SWR Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden and Freiburg always gives scope to new movements, guests and musical works within the SWR broadcasting area and also on tour: the 2014/15 season took the musicians amongst others to major festivals in Berlin, Lucerne, Vienna and Paris. At Opéra Dijon they played Alban Berg’s “Wozzeck” and in Baden-Baden a focus featuring the music of Pierre Boulez in several parts to mark his 90th birthday. Under the “Beethoven plus” heading a Freiburg Festival under the direction of François-Xavier Roth juxtaposed major works of Beethoven with more recent and the latest symphonic music.
François-Xavier Roth assumed his post as Chief Conductor at the concluding concert of the 2011 Donaueschingen Festival – a clear signal of how much he also values New Music. Since its reestablishment in 1950 the Donaueschingen Festival and the SWR Symphony Orchestra have been inextricably linked. Some 500 compositions were premiered here by the orchestra and the orchestra wrote music history: with music by Hans Werner Henze, Bernd Alois Zimmermann, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Olivier Messiaen, Helmut Lachenmann or Wolfgang Rihm. Until today the SWR Symphony Orchestra in Donaueschingen, as well as beyond, has been an indispensable partner for composers of our day.
“In the center of European culture” – as the long-standing Chief Conductor Sylvain Cambreling put it – the orchestra not only relates to contemporary music. Since its founding in 1946 the SWR Symphony Orchestra has been a magnet for international conductors and soloists as well as musical ambassadors at home and abroad, between Hamburg and Madrid, Berlin and New York. The SWR Symphony Orchestra has recorded over 600 works from three centuries.
Forming a driving force for these varied activities were and are its prestigious Chief Conductors – from Hans Rosbaud and Ernest Bour through to Michael Gielen, Sylvain Cambreling and Franҫois-Xavier Roth. They conducted and formed an orchestra that over more than six decades rose to special challenges attaining a degree of flexibility and aplomb seldom achieved elsewhere.
These special challenges also include numerous children’s and youth initiatives. In 2014 PatchDays, a new interactive project, brought together orchestra musicians in several intensive work phases with a total of 300 children and laypeople for workshops, film projects and joint performances at Freiburg’s Konzerthaus while in 2015 a symphonic PatchDay followed with an orchestra featuring Freiburg’s amateur musicians, music students and professionals.
In 2014 the orchestra received the honorary prize of the Deutsche Schallplattenkritik for its services “to today’s lively music culture”, the Special Achievement Award from the International Classical Music Awards, the ECHO Klassik as 2014 Orchestra of the Year for its recording of Hans Zender’s “Logos-Fragmente” and in 2015 it received a Grammy nomination for the CD “Moses und Aron”, Arnold Schönberg’s unfinished opera.
For the 2016/17 season the SWR Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden and Freiburg will merge with the Radio Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart of the SWR. The new SWR Symphony Orchestra will be headquartered in Stuttgart and will remain true to the artistic tradition of its predecessors.